Activity Title: Perspectives on the benefits of MyScience

About:

A range of stakeholders discuss what they see as the benefits of conducting MyScience investigations.

Video 1: Reasons for participating

Captions:

Music

Teacher: I found MyScience to be a very good program.

It threw me into Science full stop.

It made me teach Science in a completely new way.

I say prior to MyScience I was teaching a rather limited a range of Science,

if any and that was through you know the stuff that was either

given to us through our unit's of work or just

other independent sort of experiments.

But it's given me a huge appreciation for teaching of Science

in schools and I can see a difference between my kids' analysis

and my kids being able to be more confident

in giving their own investigation than classes who are doing 'Science'

and not really doing an investigation as such,

it's just more of a recipe based Science.

So, I'm all for it, I think it's a fantastic program

and I would recommend it.

Mentor: I think by introducing Science in primary school is half the effort.

When I was in primary school I barely remember doing anything like this.

You know, you sort of got introduced to 'What is the planets?'

And you know certain little things like that but to actually be able

to do experiments, it's quite interesting and exciting,

it makes the kids see that Science isn't just boring you know

out of a textbook sort of stuff.

So, it just brings home that reality that it doesn't have to be boring

and that it's all around us.

So, letting them know where you know that there's Science in Coke

and you know little things like that and even looking at your

dishwashing detergent just seeing how you can explore different things

in everyday life, it just makes things interesting

and you can relate to it, so.

Assistant Principal: I guess like me to be explaining to people

that it's not as big a deal as what it seemed to me when I was doing it

last year, it seemed much more complex than I think it really needed to be,

it could be simplified.

But I still think it's a really good thing for teachers,

to train teachers how to teach Science and I think once you've done

MyScience you'll never teach Science the same way as you did before.

It will become a priority for you and you know that for your class

then all of your students know how to conduct a scientific investigation

and they know what's important about fair testing.

That makes them good consumers even if it's not to do with school,

they see an ad on the television they'll know 'No, that's not right'.

They hear about some survey they think 'No, that doesn't prove it at all'.

And things even like where someone says 'Oh well, my Dad smokes and he

didn't die so therefore smoking is not bad'.

They'll understand that is not a valid thing to say.

Principal: MyScience gave us an opportunity, a learning opportunity

and I think the thing that impressed me was it was so well organised

and also that the support was there.

The idea of bringing mentors into the school and so on,

it just seemed to be very well organised and an opportunity to put

Science back on the main agenda.

So, we were just very impressed with the way it was presented.

I think it's been important to have that really special focus to make

something special means that people lift in their enthusiasm,

the students lift and I think just that sort of concentrated focus

on Science has been the thing that's changed it.

But I also must give a recognition to my staff,

it's not something that I can just push on my own,

it's something that I say 'Here's an opportunity for us'.

And each year we've done it two or three or four teachers

have put their hand up to say 'Yep, we'll take this

opportunity for the kids'.

And every year we've just had a good program running.

Well, I think it's raised the profile of Science in the school.

I was actually mentoring one of the groups and they've already picked up

some of the language of Science, you know and I'd say to them you know

'What are you keeping the same ...?'

'Oh yes we know you've got to keep this and that the same,

you only change one thing'.

So, they're starting to think like young scientists

and use the language of Science.

So, I think it's changed their outlook and I think they'll take

that away with them into the future, that scientific method

and they really do start to understand it at even such a young age.

Parent: I think Caitlyn's learned a lot of scientific method

and investigation processes.

Just thinking about what they're trying to prove or disprove

and then figuring out how they can actually do that and focusing on

fair testing and I think that's a big part of it for children is that

they want to change this and they want to change that.

But getting them to understand that you really have to focus on you know

changing as little as possible and making sure that you conduct a fair test.

And I think she's learned a lot about that.

Notes:

While the effort of participating in MyScience is acknowledged, the benefits described are immense.